Alice Bentinck, The Girl Who Believes Tech Shouldn’t Be A Boys Club

You are a girl who has just graduated from high school and you are doing a research how to continue your education. You can’t decide whether it should be in the field of finance, marketing, law, or perhaps philology? Are we on the right track? Have you ever thought of building a tech career and learning to code? Many people would say that coding isn’t for girls. You are also one of those who believe that the Tech World is too boring and complex for women. But can you imagine what the devices would be like if women were creating them?

Meet Alice Bentinck – a girl who attended an all-girls school that never promoted a career in IT. Graduating from the University of Nottingham Business School, Alice originally became a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. This is where she realized how growing the importance of technology in our lives is and considered that becoming part of the digital revolution will be her next challenge.

She left her cozy corporate job and built the first UK-wide startup accelerator for graduates, Entrepreneur First, in 2011. Entrepreneur First was performing really well. They managed to build 11 startUPs valued at 22m £ and were feeling really proud of themselves. But the thing that was really depressing was that in all those startUP teams that they have nourished girls were almost extinct species. They discovered that tech startUPs in general are developing a fairly male culture and thought that something has to be done and that shouldn’t be the norm. This is how the idea of Code First: Girls was born – an introduction of web programming for female students and undergraduates.

If you are reading this, consider yourself a lucky girl as you will have the chance to meet Alice Bentinck and ask her all those silly girl questions about startups and IT that are popping into your mind in person. You will only have to book your sit at StartUP Conference Next 2014 and be ready to dive into the big blue sea of the startUP world.

For all those students who think that attending conferences of such rank is an expensive pleasure, don’t worry! You can grab your special students discount and still be part of StartUP Conference Next 2014 here: http://2014.startup.bg/

Don’t be afraid of leaping into the unknown cause every programmer was first an amateur!